Slashdot Mirror
NY Times Passes 1M Digital Subscribers
HughPickens.com writes: Many news organizations, facing competition from digital outlets, have sharply reduced the size of their newsrooms and their investment in news gathering but less than four-and-a-half years after launching its pay model the NY Times has increased coverage as it announced that the Times has passed one million digital-only subscribers, giving them far more than any other news organization in the world. The Times still employs as many reporters as it did 15 years ago — and its ranks now include graphics editors, developers, video journalists and other digital innovators. "It's a tribute to the hard work and innovation of our marketing, product and technology teams and the continued excellence of our journalism," says CEO Mark Thompson.
According to Ken Doctor the takeaway from the Times success is that readers reward elite global journalism. The Wall Street Journal is close behind the Times, at 900,000, while the FT's digital subscription number stands at 520,000. "These solid numbers form bedrock for the future. For news companies, being national now means being global, and being global means enjoying unprecedented reach," says Doctor. "These audiences of a half-million and more portend more reader revenue to come."
According to Ken Doctor the takeaway from the Times success is that readers reward elite global journalism. The Wall Street Journal is close behind the Times, at 900,000, while the FT's digital subscription number stands at 520,000. "These solid numbers form bedrock for the future. For news companies, being national now means being global, and being global means enjoying unprecedented reach," says Doctor. "These audiences of a half-million and more portend more reader revenue to come."
A million people online who don't understand that deleting your cookies enables you to read as many articles as you want for free.
I'm glad someone is still paying for news to be produced. I'm not going to.
Then they go away.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
People actually pay money for NYT? Ouch.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
I am one of one million, and a long-time reader of NY Times. Frankly, I think this is a little over blown and I sure hope they don't hurt themselves patting themselves on the back. I read the NYT mobile edition daily, enabled by my subscription to the Sunday paper home delivery. The Business and Technology sections have the same content listed for weeks on end. They suffered greatly when David Pogue left. Much of the "paid" subscription content is just blog postings. Better than most blogs, written by intelligent journalists, but blog postings none-the-less.
And about once a week (at least), you get a nasty full screen popover. Their recent coverage about the cost/benefit of ad blocking shows their pages are heavy, which gets annoying and uses bandwidth if you don't hit reader view really fast or use an ad blocker.
I love the New York Times, but have never been happy with their IT department. Will never, ever, ever use the mobile app they keep trying to get me to download. Burned too many times on that one.
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
I'm an NY Times digital subscriber, for two reasons. First, subscription costs are dirt cheap for people in academia. Second, the NY Times is one of the few remaining news services in the USA that practices investigative journalism any more. I may not always agree with the NY Times' "slant" on a particular story, but at least there is some real content to what they publish.
Our local newspaper is your typical Gannett mess, with the only real "news" being the USA Today insert. The local news is little more than thinly-disguised opinion pieces, local crime reports with minimal information, and articles that rightfully belong on a Gawker site or in People magazine. My wife and I dropped our remaining weekend subscription to the local paper months ago, and we haven't missed it since.
Good for them, they've adapted, changed, and are pulling ahead. I remember when the pay-wall decision was made, they were one of the first to do it and it was an incredibly controversial and risky proposition "why would someone pay when Google News is free?". Everyone was very nervous and there were lots of naysayers but looks like they're figuring it out. Hats off and rock on.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Between CNN and Flipboard, I can read lots of news for free, then subscribe to both HBO and Netflix for same money to get much more varied entertainment. These must be loyal long term subscribers who switched from paper to digital. A healthy price point is around $99/year, where people can view subscription is a reasonable infrequent expense.
Whoever they have over there that is responsible for designing and implementing their online crossword page/apps is a genius. If you told me 10 years ago that I would enjoy doing crosswords on a cell phone I would have laughed, but they pulled it off. It's the only reason I subscribe - and the actual news/opinion is a very nice add-on feature :)
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
Hundreds of newspapers have failed and many other traditional sources (network broadcast news, etc.) are now nothing more than infotainment. People who want quality in-depth sources of information have few places to go.
Sure they must be happy...is it anywhere near what their paper figures use to be?
Once upon a time someone would buy a paper, read it and leave it on the train and someone else would have a glimpse of what the fuss is about...maybe they'd pay too if they wanted.
Before this slashdot article I had forgotten the NYT existed...
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
BBC is my main news source - I do not like the USA style of journalism.
You should pay for some sort of news outlet. New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, I don't care which: you need to make sure that the place you're getting your information from is beholden to its readers, not just to its advertisers and owners. You know the old saying: if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product.
I'm a nobody, yet I have over 20,000 subscribers.
They also put NYT's 1,000,000 subscribers into perspective, BBC News Online gets 40 million unique users a week.
The current UK government is trying to gut the BBC
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/11598450/Tories-go-to-war-with-the-BBC.html
What's the point of comparing the magnitude of completely different quantities? Why not compare NYT's paid subscriptions to BBC News paid subscriptions? Or compare NYT unique users per week to BBC.
NY Times (All Time High): 1M Digital Subscribers
World of Warcraft (Nine-Year Low): 5.6M Subscribers
(Source: World of Warcraft subscriber numbers)
Just because you can sneak into the theater doesn't mean you should. Sure if you need a quick peak inside the tent I would imagine NY times is happy to have you interested in their added value news products. They do have a fairly reasonable policy of 10 free articles per month. And in doing that they leave themselves open to the work around you suggest. Would you recommend they discontinue that nice porous paywall because of cretons like you? The good news for them is you are not really their customer and you still get to see their advertisements while you gloat over your cleverness.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I know my college offers a "free" digital subscription to NYT's. I wonder if they're counting the ones that they give out to schools? I know that's how I get mine...and my college not an ivy league or anything. I would be curious to see how many of the 1 million are paid subscriptions...
So thats 1048576 in decimal
Not just the editorial spin. News outlets -- almost all news outlets,as well as places like Facebook -- spin content (at least) five additional ways.
First, simply by the choice of what they cover. I think that's fairly obvious, but I'll elaborate if it turns out not to be.
Second, by how they cover it. Some examples:
o Giving "equal consideration" to the ridiculous and absurd, such as anti-vaxxing, often anecdote-driven
o The opposite: Ignoring valid viewpoints (presuming the viewpoint of the paper/author is profound truth)
o Treating superstition as if it was valid (this is essentially straight-up pandering... lots of superstition out there)
o Gullible parroting: "Government said so, so it's true"
o Failure to look at root causes (guns instead of culture is a common one recently)
o Presenting a completely skewed view as outright agitprop (Fox News is a poster child for this)
Third, by picking and choosing who can advertise. Again, pretty obvious.
Fourth, by over-controlling the comment stream. Not deleting/blocking trolls -- abusive posts, etc., but deleting/blocking well-written points of view that don't agree with the news source's take.
Fifth, by locking out voices they don't want to hear from -- felons, etc. Facebook is the poster child for this, just read their terms of service for an eye-opener.
There may very well be others I've not picked up on, too.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That is a significant insight. Pulls quite a few truths, and implied consequences of those truths, together in one pithy remark. Kudos, sir. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
NYT and other mainstream USA news sources are the propaganda arm of the USA government. Noam Chomsky documented their excessive pro-government nonsense in "Manufacturing Consent" and nothing has changed in the decades since. They're more than happy to publish article after article citing anonymous "high ranking" officials in the government and treating the info as the gospel. They simply publish the stories based on info they get from their unnamed sources in government without the slightest hint of skepticism, let alone any attempt to confirm or dispute the information. The most egregious example was their selling of the "WMD in Iraq" and "Mushroom Cloud" bullshit in the days leading up to the invasion.
Glenn Greenwald has done numerous articles exposing the MSM and the NYT in particular for being willing accomplices in spreading the official government narrative at the expense of the truth and their practice of obfuscating rather than investigating the facts.
Just today Greenwald (theintercept.com) reported on the Times' ridiculous propagandizing over the USA government bombing of the MSF facility in Afghanistan. The "Ministry of Truth" would be envious at the Times' ability to divert, distract and deflect from the real issue while simultaneously masquerading as a genuine information source.
They'd have to pay me to be a subscriber.
It is truly amazing how many people will pay for their crap! FWIW, when I was an active investor I had a digital subscription to the WSJ, until Murdock took it over and ruined the publication. 900,000 people subscribe to the digital WSJ and 1M to the NYT? The old saying about saying about fools and their money comes to mind here.
Speaking as a university professor this is not really correct. As a physicist I can certainly do scientific research but that is not the same as investigating human behaviour since humans, and especially politicians, have been known to lie, hide information, behave irrationally etc. You also run into ethical issues if try to run experiments on them. This is why you do not see many scientists moonlighting as police detectives or, indeed, as journalists.
In addition we are not particularly skilled at writing things down in a way which draws the reader in and captivates their attention. Have you ever read a scientific paper? It's designed to impart a great deal of precise information not entertain and inform the reader.